Date of Award
Spring 5-8-2024
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art
Degree Type
Thesis
Abstract
In textiles, installations, and interactive performances, I explore how spiritual practice becomes art practice. My experiences as a hospice volunteer, musician, and Buddhist inform my work’s focus on contemplating impermanence as a path to spiritual transformation. Artmaking is a vehicle for exploring the nature of my reality, and both communicating what I find and sharing the path itself. I take inspiration from mystic/artists such as Hilma af Klint, Sengai Gibon, and Agnes Martin, who have sought to expound the path of awakening in artistic form.
In content as well as process, my work explores notions of empathy, awareness, ceremony, and aspiration. I seek to create an empathetic experience of meditative calm through subtle stitching. I externalize meditation in drawings and paintings, translating awareness practices into physical existence. I create improvised spiritual ceremonies using music and chanting, bringing ancient traditions into contemporary forms, to include others in my contemplative work as an offering. I utilize poetry to create a sense of aspiration, translating my highest ideals into material form. By bringing my spiritual exploration into the realm of the physical with artmaking, I hope to give others a piece of what I have received from the spiritual path – a calmness, a sense of the preciousness of life, and in the intention of serving others, a purpose for living.
Language
English
Program Chair
Lisa Bulawsky
Thesis Text Advisor
Lisa Bulawsky
Thesis Text Advisor
Meghan Kirkwood
Faculty Mentor
Lisa Bulawsky
Committee Member
Cheryl Savage Wassenaar
Committee Member
Thomas Reed
Recommended Citation
Geiger, Jordan, "Spirit, Art, and Care" (2024). MFA in Visual Art. 23.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_visual_art/23
Artist's Statement
I am an artist and musician, a practicing Buddhist and also a volunteer in hospice care. Art practice, spiritual contemplation, and caregiving are three perspectives from which I explore the world. Each offers a slightly different view and way of being.
Central to all is the idea of presence – open awareness, empty and responsive, a grounded space of possibility, beyond trying to fix or control anything. I seek presence in meditation, in drawing, stitching, playing music, and in the course of caregiving.
My work in textiles, paintings and drawings, performance, and poetry is a vehicle for me to explore spiritual concepts.
In the spirit of love, generosity, and subtlety, I hope to give rise to an idea in the viewer – through artmaking, caregiving, and spiritual practice, we can create a mindful community. We have the materials to make a more compassionate way of living before we pass away.